“The Secret to Solar Power” from the NYT Times Magazine

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If you haven’t read the Sunday New York Times Magazine piece, “The Secret to Solar Power,” we strongly recommend that you check it out, as it’s an important one for the industry. *Among other things,... The post “The Secret to Solar Power” from the NYT Times Magazine appeared first on Solar Feeds.

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Eric L

Re: “The Secret to Solar Power” from the NYT Times Magazine

I found this article disappointing. It tries to locate the limits to the solar industry's growth in social attitudes with claims like these:

Two factors have hurt the industry’s growth. The first is abstract and well ingrained in the American psyche: the negative association of “green” technologies with inefficiency and idealistic, hippie-fueled impracticality. The second is concrete and recent: the sleek, vacant headquarters of Solyndra

Whatever impact these attitudes may have (I'm skeptical they are anywhere near as significant as the article implies), the economic and infrastructure limitations have surely played a much larger role in limiting solar's expansion. For instance, there was no discussion in the article of the enormous disparity in government subsidies for fossil fuels and nuclear on the one hand, versus renewables on the other, which has surely greatly hindered the solar industry far more than these alleged social attitudes. And there was only passing mention of the significant infrastructure hurdles to solar becoming a major contributor to the grid; namely that the grid isn't prepared for it, especially once the issue of energy storage is taken into consideration.